On Mar 13, 2008, at 9:46 AM, David Gerard wrote:
On 13/03/2008, Todd Allen <toddmallen(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 6:40 AM, White Cat
<wikipedia.kawaii.neko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Reliable sources? For an episode? Let me
think how can we get
> that... Hmm...
> Hmm... Oh RIGHT! How about the episode itself? Its quite reliable
> and
> verifiable. Each time you watch it it is the same story, same plot.
That is not a reliable, independent, secondary
source.
And sourcing is not a bureaucratic checklist. The source text being
discussed is obviously relevant to an article and, if objectively
checkable, certainly citable.
Indeed. Comments like Todd's are deeply baffling to me. As an active
scholar working on areas of popular culture, I cannot imagine any
justification for going to a secondary source, independent or
otherwise, for something as straightforward as a plot summary. Were I
peer reviewing any paper that did that, I would reject it out of hand
for egregiously sloppy research.
While I recognize that Wikipedia's goals in research are different
from active professional scholarship, I would suggest that a policy
that amounts to "use laughably bad sources instead of good ones" is
not one that we actually mean.
-Phil